Agar, also called Kanten in Japan. It is a polysaccharide extracted from red algae such as Gelidium and Gracilaria, and is one of the most widely used algae colloids. Agar has been used as food for several hundred years in China and Japan. It first appeared in the form of jelly-like block, which form is still available nowadays. After World War II Western countries began to industrialize the production of agar powder. Agar powder was initially used for bacteria culturing, later extended to food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. Agar has unique gel performance and gel stability, and therefore, has a wide range of applications in food industry, as well as in pharmaceutical, cosmetics and biological engineering industries.
Clean Label and disruptive Green have become more and more popular in food industrials, and have been listed in the “Top 10 Innova's 2017 Trends,” resulting in strong interests in naturalness and clean label. This trend has been growing globally for the past couple of years and is the new standard in the industry. It provides vast market space development potential for seaweed meal to replace agar in food application.
US Patent Application Publication No. 2015/0164125 describes a method for making seaweed meal, including the steps of harvesting the seaweed from a sea floor; chopping the seaweed; cleaning the seaweed; desiccating the seaweed; grinding the seaweed to a meal; drying the seaweed between the cleaning step and the desiccating step, the drying step is accomplished by a seaweed agitator. U.S. Pat. No. 4,125,392 describes a seaweed filter cake product produced by conditioning raw seaweed by mixing it with water and other substances, and then digesting the conditioned seaweed by cooking it with steam to form a steam-digested mixture. The filter cake is skimmed off the top of the resulting steam-digested mixture and used by itself, or as a starting product for producing fertilizers or plant growth stimulators in liquid or pelletized form.
The prior-art references merely produced a simple seaweed meal or cake products, with poor gelling capability, brown or green color, and strong fishery flavor. These prior-art seaweed products are not suitable for use as gelling agent or stabilizer in food applications to replace agar extracted from red seaweed. Thus, there is a need in the field to produce better quality seaweed meal suitable for food applications.